QUEENSLAND is hopelessly underfunding its roads and public transport, with a backlog of $9 billion of urgently needed upgrades in the next decade as people spend longer in traffic jams.

A scathing Queensland Audit Office report has found that while the State Government’s signature blueprint for growth in the southeast foreshadows roads and public transport that let people seamlessly commute to work, “the opposite is more likely”.

The Government’s ShapingSEQ plan finds journey lengths, trip times and the average kilometres people will travel each year will all fall, but includes no rationale for these assumptions.

In fact, modelling by the Department of Transport and Main Roads finds the average trip length will increase by around 14km and the average trip time will increase by 30 per cent – up to 20 minutes.

TMR’s own assessment is that there was an underfunding backlog of $4 billion as at June this year that will only worsen to exceed $9 billion in a decade.

“The underfunding has resulted in risks to the sustainability of the transport network,” Auditor-General Brendan Worrall said.

Without a solution to these massive funding shortfalls, the state may not be able to upgrade or even properly maintain its transport networks, his assessment reads.

The Government was further criticised for not sharing its “powerful and useful web-based tool” that tracks transport performance with the public, or even MPs.

assesses the merits of amending the Transport Planning and Coordination Act 1992 to require its chief executive to prepare a transport policy for the minister's approval. (Chapter 2)Regional transport planning

We recommend that DTMR:

2.

strengthens how its regional transport plans integrate with regional land use plans (Chapter 3)

When both plans are developed in a region, this means documenting how:

regional transport plans and regional land use plans align in terms of the goals, outcomes, and input assumptions transport-related actions in regional plans are considered in regional transport plans.

This should be based on the performance measures that are most appropriate for each region.

4.

develops a plan to implement the actions from the regional transport plans (Chapter 4)

This should include identifying the resources it requires for each action (including transport modelling tasks), and the timeframe and priority of each action.

5.

updates the regional transport plans after it has implemented the actions that will help it define the problems for each region. (Chapter 3)

This should include:

defining problems for each region based on the evidence it collates when it implements the actions from the plans identifying any necessary new actions prioritising all actions based on the problem definition.

Modal strategies

We recommend that DTMR:

6.

develops performance monitoring mechanisms for the objectives of the transport coordination plan for all of its modal strategies (Chapter 2)

7.

updates its modal strategies and once approved, publishes them with the transport coordination plan as an integrated framework. (Chapter 2)

The modal strategies should show how they support the transport coordination plan objectives.Performance reporting

DTMR should periodically publish performance results against the transport coordination plan to show the extent to which it achieves the plan's objectives.Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and PlanningRegional land use planning

We recommend that the Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning (DILGP):

9.

when developing future regional plans, documents its analysis of DTMR's strategic transport modelling and how it uses the modelling to inform regional plans that have a transport focus (Chapter 3)

tracking progress against objectives and actions monitoring and reporting progress on outcomes, including transport outcomes identifying whether strategies are performing as expected and adjusting where required.

Priority development areas

We recommend that DILGP:

11.

clarifies how it will monitor and measure transport outcomes in its existing priority development scheme evaluations. (Chapter 4)

This should describe the key performance indicators, and the methods DILGP will use to measure progress, and assess and mitigate risks to the achievement of objectives.

Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning and Department of Transport and Main RoadsRisk identification and management

We recommend that DTMR:

12.

assesses and analyses the risks of not achieving the preferred transport future in ShapingSEQ and reports it to DILGP, where relevant, for the purpose of monitoring and reporting on the performance of the plan. (Chapter 3)

We recommend that DILGP works with DTMR to:

13.

improve the completeness of evidence retained to support key decisions made in developing land use plans. (Chapter 4)

When testing planning scenarios, documentation for transport modelling should summarise the objectives, scope, assumptions, results, conclusions, any limitations, and any decisions made.

More evidence of the failure that DTMR is these days. One only has to consider the appalling management of the New Generation Rollingstock program that has now forced the operator Queensland Rail to act in contravention of the DDA, the DSAPT and their own Accessibility Action Plan. It is no wonder that legal actions are now underway. The law is the law. A full Commission of Inquiry is needed into this NGR project failure.

QUEENSLAND is hopelessly underfunding its roads and public transport, with a backlog of $9 billion of urgently needed upgrades in the next decade as people spend longer in traffic jams.

A scathing Queensland Audit Office report has found that while the State Government’s signature blueprint for growth in the southeast foreshadows roads and public transport that let people seamlessly commute to work, “the opposite is more likely”.

Welcome to Transport Mr Bailey. You now have two basket cases to attempt to sort out on OUR behalf - Main Roads and Transport.

"The Government’s ShapingSEQ plan finds journey lengths, trip times and the average kilometres people will travel each year will all fall, but includes no rationale for these assumptions."

The gap between the glossy brochure rhetoric, drive throughs and artists' impressions and actual reality is very wide indeed in Queensland.

The Auditor-General's comments re linking regional land use plans with regional transport plans should be welcomed. You can't go plonking new cities such as Aura (Caloundra South) and Harmony (Palmview), together an extra 70,000 people about the place, without also planning transport connections and capacity expansion AND BUILDING IT.

Of course, at the root of all of this is money, or the lack of it. Maybe Ms Trad should put her bureaucrats to work on devising a land tax on every property in Queensland to fund vital infrastructure.

Being a politician, however, she will shout slogans at us -- NO NEW TAXES, while Queenslanders wear the consequences of such a narrow view (more congestion, slower travel times).

Instead, we are likely to get more of the same, with Ms Trad standing on the northern bank of the Tweed River, facing Canberra and shouting SHOW US THE MONEY!! That's about as sophisticated as it gets in Queensland politics.

Negative people... have a problem for every solution.Posts are commentary and are not necessarily endorsed by RAIL Back on Track or its members. Not affiliated with, paid by or in conspiracy with MTR/Metro.

Unfortunately this report is itself seriously light-weight. It doesn't propose the kind of structural reforms that would actually fix anything, just perpetuates the same mistake of calling for improvements "somehow".

^ if you wondering why they aren't suggesting structural changes in the report its simple........red team have no plan for structural changes......so in the case of this report its 'what we have to work with under the current government'.

Here is a money-making suggestion for the government .... when the next slick video presentation is prepared, showing the vision for public transport in SEQ-3018 (so far off in the future that the current government doesn't have to pay for anything other than the media production costs), members of the public could be offered, for a price, rights to appear as an avatar. That way you could defray the production costs too. Something for nothing - the ultimate Treasurer's dream.

I really doubt that a rebrand to PTQ will do anything to fix this mess.

Until CRR is done, improvements to the rail network can't happen. Until Metro is done, why bother changing the bus routes when there's only going to be another overhaul in five years?

There is no quick fix. Any long lasting solution to SEQ's public transport woes will take years. Transferring the problems to another body only highlights that mismanagement to the public and will cause political damage to whichever party is in power, so they won't go for it either.

I really doubt that a rebrand to PTQ will do anything to fix this mess.

Until CRR is done, improvements to the rail network can't happen. Until Metro is done, why bother changing the bus routes when there's only going to be another overhaul in five years?

There is no quick fix. Any long lasting solution to SEQ's public transport woes will take years. Transferring the problems to another body only highlights that mismanagement to the public and will cause political damage to whichever party is in power, so they won't go for it either.

Wrong.

There are still lots of incremental changes that can be made to the network to utilise what is there. Expanding 15 minute frequency to weekends. Extending 15 minute frequency to Shorncliffe, Manly and Altandi. Getting to the bottom of the issues with the NGR. Making sure that the NGRs brought into service are actually disability compliant. Fixing issues like the gross lack of services on the Cleveland Line in the PM peak. All of these require more rollingstock and more drivers, not CRR.

And then there's bus reform. There are whole swathes of Brisbane crying out for service. The GC had a big wave of network reform, only to have to make considerable modifications 6-9 months later when the trams started running. There is plenty of time for network reform, just BCC has gone cold after some good initial signs, and the ALP still associates "bus network reform" with "service cuts and sackings of union members".

And then there's just the general mediocrity. Lack of proper service updates. Cancelled & delayed services not being reported on. Statistics like passenger loading surveys and so forth being scrapped or hidden. Someone needs to have the political balls to stand up and make some decent reform, otherwise PT is going to continue to be nothing more than mediocre in this state, and Brisbane will continue to maintain, possibly even advance, the reputation that Queensland is just a hick backwater with nothing going for it.

This is one of the unfinalised issues that the Citytrain Response Unit is looking at, and during the election campaign Ms Trad confirmed it is something they will look at. The RACQ also pushed it along as well. Sources have also suggested to me that this is something that will be considered in this new term of Government.

YOU do not generally find words like “disaster”, “shambles” and “duplicity” in the carefully crafted prose of government reports.

However the latest report of the Queensland Audit Office into the state’s transport planning cannot help, no matter how colourless its wording, but reveal state government ineptitude on a grand scale.

It found that, as at June 30, the Department of Transport and Main Roads was $4 billion short of what it needed to carry out necessary work on our road system.

By 2027, the report confidently predicts, this figure will be $9 billion.

What does this mean?

Simply, the Government will be hard pressed patching up existing roads and bridges, let alone building new ones.

It also means that “the amount it plans to allocate to maintain and renew (extend the useful life of) the network is not enough to stop the transport system from further deteriorating”.

The previous Palaszczuk Government was aware the road system was in crisis.

Its answer, apart from hiring more public servants and giving them all a rise, was to fabricate a study that showed how rosy things were.

ShapingSEQ was penned by the Department of Infrastructure, and could easily have contested the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

According to ShapingSEQ, thanks to the incredible results being achieved by Government transport initiatives, commuter travel times and distances were set to fall.

Well, not quite.

The audit report found that, according to TMR, travel times will actually increase by about 30 per cent.

In reaching its conclusions, the authors of ShapingSEQ ignored any data that conflicted with its preordained finding that everything was hunky dory and would only get better.

In a telling reference, the audit report notes the authors “did not engage TMR to forecast transport outcomes for the measures in the final version of ShapingSEQ”.

Of course they didn’t, because input from TMR would have contradicted the fantasy they were trying to weave.

TMR, it must be said, is no stranger to collecting misleading data.

In assessing the performance of transport in terms of efficiency, reliability, and integration it looked at only 12 of the 275 daytime bus routes in southeast Queensland, and completely ignored other forms of public transport such as trains and ferries.

The newly minted Minister for Infrastructure, Cameron Dick, might care to cast an eye over the audit report, as it is scathing in its assessment of the Economic Development Queensland unit for which, as minister, he is responsible.

EDQ, it found, had failed to monitor progress towards intended transport outcomes and to respond to trends and risks that potentially undermined them, and had failed to make progress in addressing this need.

In other words, its well-paid public servants had managed to achieved precisely zero. Well done.

Looking on the bright side, we must assume the newly re-elected Government will do better this time around, if only because it couldn’t do any worse.

" ... TMR, it must be said, is no stranger to collecting misleading data.

In assessing the performance of transport in terms of efficiency, reliability, and integration it looked at only 12 of the 275 daytime bus routes in southeast Queensland, and completely ignored other forms of public transport such as trains and ferries. ... "

Short-term politics has nobbled traffic planning in Greater Brisbane in the past decade and must be addressed urgently or the region will choke on cars, according to one of Australia’s most experienced urban planners.

It has led to a call from Planning Institute of Australia hall-of-famer Phil Heywood for the establishment of an infrastructure delivery authority, which would oversee decisions from all three levels of government.

Brisbane traffic now strains against heritage-listed bridges on Kingsford Smith Drive (1860s), Indooroopilly (1936), and Wynnum Road (1940s), and against the most modern version of the Victoria Bridge (1969) in the heart of the city.

Professor Heywood was added to the Planning Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2014 after working as an urban planner in England and Australia, publishing 100 papers and two books on urban planning and heading Queensland University of Technology's urban planning school for three decades.

He said short-term politics had led to a decade-long delay to Cross River Rail, delays in effectively using Victoria Bridge, no action since 2008 on a proposed alternative to Moggill Road and ugly delays to Brisbane's new trains.

Ultimately, its recommendations resulted in the Goodwill Bridge (2001), Eleanor Schonell Bridge (2006), the Kurilpa Bridge (2009) and kick-started the SEQ Busway network and the duplication of the Gateway Bridge in 2012.

The pros and cons of turning Brisbane’s Victoria Bridge into a public and active transport-only bridge; The pros and cons of a proposed pedestrian bridge from Brisbane’s new casino across to South Bank; RACQ’s ambitious Bridging Brisbane plan, where 4600 residents suggested priorities for new river crossings; and Better cross-river links between Brisbane’s fast-growing outer eastern and western suburbs, revisiting the western bypass concept.

Professor Heywood said it was time for the three levels of government, along with private industry and other stakeholders, to collectively reassess the next traffic projects over the next 18 months.

“I know it seems a delay, but when you think how long we have been having these problems (slowing travel times), that isn’t too long,” he said.

Professor Heywood proposed the following organisations develop a new metropolitan traffic study:

The Department of Transport and Main Roads; Brisbane City Council; The federal government; The Planning Institute of Australia; The Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Institute of Landscape Architects; The Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management; RACQ; Bicycling Queensland; and The Council of Mayors (SEQ).

Fairfax Media has asked these organisations their views, which will be published in due course.

As it stands, Brisbane City Council is updating its Brisbane Transport Study, while the state government updates transport in its SEQ Regional Plan and the Council of Mayors (SEQ) has its own project list.

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland president Stephen Smith said there was frustration among planners in many areas of Queensland infrastructure and engineering industry.

However, he said the solution was not a new cross-industry planning study, but for the three levels of government to bluntly acknowledge longer time lines than “the next election”.

“Overall, we got to try to plan towards the city we want; not the city we are prepared to put up with,” Professor Heywood said.Professor Heywood's views on Brisbane's bridge issues

The proposed pedestrian bridge from new casino to South Bank should be reviewed, Professor Heywood said.

“I think any transport study would look at it and go, ‘that looks interesting’, but I don’t think it would pass much scrutiny,” he said.

Victoria Bridge makes an excellent green bridge, Professor Heywood said, but should not be "overloaded".

“In theory, it’s a good idea in a perfect location for the city’s newest green bridge. However traders along Melbourne Street and people using South Bank Parklands should be intensively consulted," he said.

“People who live in outer Brisbane and in the suburbs around the metropolitan inner-city may well have some need for access to the cultural complexes and South Bank Parklands via that bridge.”

Professor Heywood suggested an alternative.

“The (Brisbane Metro) idea is to take buses from a subterranean bus station at South Bank to a subterranean bus tunnel under King George Square and the best way of doing that would be by using a tunnel," he said.

“I’m not saying that is the complete and absolute answer, I’m saying that should be looked at as one of the options.”

Professor Heywood said Brisbane needed a new cross-river car bridge between Balmoral and Hamilton and more cross-river lanes between Jindalee and Kenmore, where the Centenary Bridge had four lanes, and between Indooroopilly and Chelmer, where the Walter Taylor Bridge struggled to cope.

“But of course that takes us straight to the overall, bigger issue which is to see what their ‘offsite consequences’ will be,” he said.

Professor Heywood said it was time to mirror the efectiveness of the Gateway Motorway with a similar traffic route in Brisbane's western suburbs.

"The Gateway speeds traffic from the south, from the Gold Coast through Brisbane and north up towards the Sunshine Coast," he said.

“I mean there is now a very interesting case for an outer western bypass linking up out past Brookfield and The Gap up towards the north.

“It would almost replicate the great virtues of the Gateway Arterial."